by Shawn Nowlin
There are more than 100 churches throughout the Roanoke Valley. Some are memorial churches that operate under the belief that the best days are in the past. Some are maintenance churches that believe that right now things are as good as they will ever be. Others are movement churches that presume that the best days are still to come.
One would think that with Black Americans representing nearly 30 percent of the city’s population and white people comprising about 57 percent, the local church landscape would have much more crossover.
There are certain Roanoke Valley occasions throughout the year that bring Christians from different denominations, churches, races and backgrounds together. Every week in April, for instance, parishioners from historically Black congregations Loudon Avenue Christian , Fifth Avenue Presbyterian and Hill Street Baptist as well as two predominately white churches – Second Presbyterian and Raleigh Court Presbyterian – gather to have an open dialogue on a variety of topics.
The meetings, titled “The Bible in Black and White,” are usually held at Second Presbyterian in the Old Southwest neighborhood. The two ministers who initiated the sessions are Dr. Bill Lee, a Black retired pastor who spent nearly four decades as the leader of Loudon Avenue Christian Church and George Anderson of Second Presbyterian, a white preacher who has been in Roanoke for the last 25 years. At each meeting, everyone’s perspective is heard.
Dozens of people attended each of the sessions last month which were open to all, regardless of whether they attend church or not. Problems such as homelessness, crime, educational opportunities and poverty often cut across generational and racial lines. Everyone involved agrees that it’s important to acknowledge the past, but we must all work together towards a better future.
Having spent many years at both, Sammie Coleman says the biggest difference between predominately Black and white churches is the atmosphere. “It’s a feeling that is hard to explain, unless you experience it. With each though, the expressive forms of worship – shouting, jumping and spontaneous dancing – are often on full display,” Coleman said.
She added, “Black churches served as a vital space for civic activity and racial solidarity when segregation was the law of the land.”
Southwest Virginia is where the highest concentration of African-American residents in the Commonwealth currently resides. When the area became the City of Roanoke in 1882, Black residents settled in neighborhoods north of the railroad tracks. Roanoke, like countless other municipalities in the early 20th century, barred minorities from owning certain homes, among many other things.
Believing that the church should more mirror the diversity of America should not be an extreme position.
